For years and years now (since the first G4 iBooks), whenever someone asked me for advice about what laptop to buy, my standard answer was simple: get an Apple laptop. Doesn't matter which one. Apple was so far ahead of the competition it just wasn't funny anymore. This past weekend, though, marked the end of an era for me: for the first time, I advised someone to get an Asus ZenBook instead.

I've tried the Zenbook and I think it's a very good product but I sort of question why you would choose it over a MacBook air which has a slightly but tangibly higher build quality, it can run a vastly larger range of operating systems more reliably (because, you know, everyone supports Apple hardware nowadays) and when it comes time to upgrade it has a much higher resale value.

Also, and let's be honest about this, when you have a problem with your Apple product you go to the Apple store and they replace it or fix it for you. If you have a problem with a ThinkBook or a Dell there is a great support organization. What do you do with you ZenBook a year down the line?

I guess if you really want to move away from Apple but you want to retain the same design aesthetic the Zenbook is a decent candidate though I think - generally - a ThinkBook would be better for most users.

@kristoph : as Thom also said, Bootcamp experience on MacBooks is far from being pleasant (see http://www.osnews.com/comments/25637 for my personal rant). The substitution of BIOS with EFI actually makes those laptops all except friendly to other operating systems.
And no, Apple will not assist you very much with windows 7 problems, and even less with linux...

I've used bootcamp for years, literally since the week windows 7 came out. With the exception of a stupid move on my part (attempt to resize a partition with older software, which failed) the experience has been quite a success, and bug-free. One of my most strait-forward, hassle free windows experiences ever. I however have a desktop mac. After reading your post, it seems like the issues you had were primarily laptop oriented (lid, battery, touchpad, etc.).

"it can run a vastly larger range of operating systems more reliably (because, you know, everyone supports Apple hardware nowadays)"

erm. Apple's firmware is a hideous nightmare. Just ask Matthew Garrett. If you're a maintainer of an OS that's not OS X or, to a limited extent, Windows, trying to make yourself installable on modern Macs is an exercise in pain. I certainly wouldn't recommend Apples as a good choice of hardware for the OS-agnostic.

"it can run a vastly larger range of operating systems more reliably (because, you know, everyone supports Apple hardware nowadays)"

erm. Apple's firmware is a hideous nightmare. Just ask Matthew Garrett. If you're a maintainer of an OS that's not OS X or, to a limited extent, Windows, trying to make yourself installable on modern Macs is an exercise in pain. I certainly wouldn't recommend Apples as a good choice of hardware for the OS-agnostic.

You don't need to run Linux natively on a MacBook Air. I have an 11 inch Air with a 128 Gb SDD and 4 Gb RAM and I run Kubuntu under VirtualBox in 2Gb of the RAM and OS X Lion in the other 2 Gb. It works great and is like having two machines in one.

If I ran Linux natively then 3D performance would be better and I could use all the RAM, but for my purposes that wouldn't make much difference. I run Windows 7 under VMWare on my iMac and that works great too. For me, the way to go is to use virtual machines for whatever OS you need to run.

I used to dual boot or install Linux natively but I really can't see much advantage anymore, and it is much less flexible. If I fancy trying a new linux distro, or I need a special Linux development environment, I can just install it into a new virtual machine and run that instead of my usual Linux VM.